BI Trends

New Report on the Future of Business Intelligence and Embedded Analytics

By Michelle Gardner | August 16, 2018

Standalone business intelligence (BI) solutions are struggling to stay afloat, according to a new report by Nucleus Research. In its First Half 2018 Market Survey, Nucleus reveals spend on BI tools will decrease more than 80 percent this year.

At the same time, spend on embedded analytics solutions is on the rise. The analyst report shows embedded analytics now represents 60 percent of new or additional analytics purchases. As Nucleus notes, “It makes little sense for most users to invest in some type of BI when the same results can be achieved for free in other embedded solutions.”

Nucleus’s findings confirm Logi’s own discoveries in the 2018 State of Embedded Analytics Report, our survey of 500 application teams. The benefits of embedded analytics—improving user engagement, differentiating products from competitors, driving revenue—continue to push standalone BI solutions out of the picture.

So what happened to BI? The fact is, standalone BI solutions do have their place. But because almost every standalone BI tool forces users to switch from their standard applications to a separate analytics app, it causes friction and frustration for end users. Business intelligence promises to give users unprecedented access to business insights, but it never quite lived up.

The 2018 State of Embedded Analytics survey is Logi’s sixth annual independent research into the embedded analytics market. In all that time, we’ve found that adoption of standalone BI tools has peaked at around 20 to 30 percent. Despite vendors investing millions in improving the user experience, these solutions have never been widely adopted.

However, we might look at this a different way. It’s true that 20 or 30 percent of end users who have access to standalone BI actually use those tools. But perhaps every data-savvy user who wants and uses standalone analytics tools has already adopted these solutions. Perhaps BI adoption is at 100 percent of its realistic market. The broader market either does not see the value these tools offer or they’ve rejected them outright.

Data shows that business users want to stay in one place, not jump from application to application to get what they need. Just look at the adoption rates for BI compared to embedded analytics. Users adopt embedded solutions twice as much as standalone tools, according to research done for the 2018 State of Embedded Analytics Report.

People clearly want their information in context of where they work, and embedded analytics delivers on this need.

Ultimately, the Nucleus Research report concludes that the embedded market will continue to grow as standalone analytics/BI vendors will either be acquired, scramble to tighten their integration offerings, or struggle to survive.